4/22/2016

Headline April 22, 2016/ ''' *WAR'S UNWOMANLY FACE* : Nobel Prize '''

''' *WAR'S UNWOMANLY FACE* :

Nobel Prize '''

SHE IS BEST KNOWN FOR giving voice to women and men who lived through major events like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-89-

And the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, -in which her sister was killed and her aged mother was blinded.

MRS SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH, 68 a Belarussian journalist and prose writer -is the 14th woman *Nobel Laureate* to receive the Nobel Prize of literature. And one of the writers to be recognized for nonfiction.

While the Nobel committee has occasionally awarded the prize to philosophers and historians, including Sir Bertrand Russel and Sir Winston Churchill, it has been more than half a century since- A dedicated nonfiction writer has won what many regards as literature's most prestigious award.

*Her selection was lauded as a long overdue corrective and a and as a high point for journalism as a literary art*. [ Students Merium, Rabo, Malala, Dee, Hussain, Shazaib, Bilal, Jordan, Ibrahim, Eman, Mustafa, Salar, Sanyia, Hamza, Haider, Sarah, Saima, Mahnoor, Tooba, Ghazi, Reza, to note].

By placing her work alongside those of international literary giants like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Albert Camus, Alice Munro and Toni Morrison, the Nobel committee has anointed a genre that is often viewed as vehicle for information rather than an aesthetic endeavor.

Ms. Alexievich's works, which delve into collective and individual memories straddle that divide.

''It's a true achievement not only in material but also in form,'' said Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, adding that Ms. Alexievich's work amounts to a ''history of emotions -a history of the soul, if you wish.''

The stories Ms. Alexievich tells are drawn from historical facts and oral histories, but have a lyrical quality and a distinct style and perspective.

''What she doing, there's a lot of art in it,'' said Philip Gourevitch, a writer for The New Yorker who has called on the Nobel judges to recognize nonfiction as literature. ''She has a voice that runs through her work that's much more than the sum of the voice she's collected.''

Many of her books are woven together from detailed oral histories. Perhaps her most acclaimed work is : *War's Unwomanly Face* [1988]-

Based on interviews with hundreds of women who took part in World War II.

The book is the first in series, ''Voices of Utopia,'' that depicted life in the Soviet Union from the point of view of ordinary citizens.

Ms. Alexievich's work fits into long standing literary tradition of deeply reported narrative nonfiction written with the sweep and the style of a novel. Practitioners include luminaries like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion and, more recently, writers like Katherine Boo and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.

Ms. Alexievich often took risks by taking on contentious elements of soviet history and challenging the official narrative.

''She was seen as a traitor, as unpatriotic,'' said Gerald Howard, the executive editor at Doubleday.

He published Ms. Alexievich's book ''Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From a Forgotten War,'' about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the trauma experienced by the Russian soldiers and their families, when he was a senior editor at W.W. Norton.

The title refers to the zinc coffins that dead Russian soldiers were sent home in. ''She was vilified all over the place for this book,'' he said, ''and she didn't back down for a second.''

Because of her criticism of the government in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, Ms Alexievich has periodically lived broad, in Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden, among other places.

For much of her adult life, though, she has lived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.In a 2013 interview with German television, she said she hoped the international attention would give her '' a degree of protection'' in Belarus, where press freedom is under constant threat.

Still, she said that she could write only in Belarus, ''where i can hear what people are talking about on the streets in cafes, or at the neighbor's place.''

While she has developed a global audience over the years, currently just three of her books are available in English, though more translations are in the works.

So,, one fine Thursday , not too long ago, Belarus's President, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has been a frequent target of Ms Alexievich's writing issued a terse congratulatory note.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011: